Explorations in Declarative Lighting Design

Declarative approaches to lighting design model image quality using an objective function that captures the desired visual properties of an object or scene. The value of the objective function is optimized for a particular camera configuration through the manipulation of the lighting parameters of a scene. We review the notion of declarative lighting design, and introduce LightOp, a tool by which the design of objective functions (the components and settings) and the application of different optimization techniques can be explored. We show how LightOp can be used to explore declarative lighting design through the realization of a number of extensions to existing approaches, including the application and evaluation of stochastic optimization; the use of backlighting to maximize edge enhancement; contrast modeling; and the use of a perceptually uniform color space.